Not a Good Mood

I HAVE BEEN not in a good mood all weekend. Every time something stresses me (and doing anything at all, or even thinking of, or worse, trying to think out something in stages does my head in) ~~ I flip my lid. And if someone else happens to be there I start yelling at them.

Today I am trying to stay calm. My druggieworker is not in. Duty fobbed me off by saying my script was not printed, said I couldn't make an appointment to see my own worker tomorrow but instead should phone first thing and ask for one then. I am trying not to be blazingly annoyed about this. I'm kind of starting to feel bad about everything but I'm not that depressed. I can still put on a Great Big "I'm OK" Act. So that's good:... ¿isn't it?

This morning I ended up googling "depression". I mean: what am I possibly going to find of any use over the internet except that exceptionally irritating quoted-to-death list of DSM Diagnostic Criteria that are no help whatever to anyone who has been depressed for more than a few weeks. The depressive state very quickly begins to feel normal and the "sufferer" will start to believe that their low mood is a justifiable reaction to a life of failure and in no way an illness of any kind. Even if they have been depressed before. Or had previous bipolar episodes. When I was at the lowest I've ever been I remember claiming not to be suffering; and yet I felt so bad that even the memory of my thoughts and feelings that week (and it was only about a week) left me traumatized for months.

I gave up drinking for about four days(?)~ or so until yesterday, when I decided to test it with one can of strawberry cyder (4% ABV: 2 alcoholic units) and a one-pint can of Skol, which I found unopened on the trek back home (3% ABV: 1.7 alcoholic units). I felt nothing, partly because I was so averse to the taste of beer it took over an hour to sup it. I used to get a yen for cold beer on hot summer afternoons. But this hasn't happened for years. I detest the taste of alchol and don't like the feeling it gives me, which nowadays seems to be a fatigued and heavy-limbed state with mild drowsiness. No "high" of any kind. Getting a "high" from alcohol, which is a cocaine-like feeling I had never experienced until last year and nothing at all like feeling "drunk", when I was already manic, is most likely a warning that (hypo-)mania is crouched in hiding around a very close corner. Or that I'm (hypo-)manic already. A small amount of alcohol was enough to set this off, and it never gave me the craving for more, because twice the drink never makes me feel twice as good. Simple law of the jungle, that one. And another reason why I don't think my drinking, which began as a side-order to accompany heroin, has ever rendered me a true dipsomaniac. I'm not sure alcohol has ever intensified feelings of depression, but when I do feel depressed, drink usually seems to do very little. Or nothing at all. I don't like it. Don't need it. And want to live a life without it... Mint n Lime is much nicer. Except the shop has already run out because I've bought every single carton from their fridge. So I tried Lemon and Lime, which was right next to it. And it's absolutely gross: with the artificial citrus flavour you got in the cheap 1980s-version of granulated "lemon tea".

I wanted to get rid of the following paragraph but may as well keep it in. Hey maybe somebody, somewhere will get a really good laugh out of it.

Yesterday I nearly blew my top because the ridiculous voice over on a tellyprog called "Planet Earth Live: A Lion's Tale". It was patently NOT live and if you tried to film wild lions live you would probably get lots of shots of golden furry ears poking out above distant tufts of grass, so I'm thinking of writing a sarcastic letter to Points of View over that one. And the voice-over overdramatized everything: "hyenas are the NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL; if this hunt is not successful, mother and baby may STARVE TO DEATH" it's a bit like giving a running commentary on a person trying to catch a train saying ONE TRIP, ONE SLIP OFF THIS PLATFORM and a HIGH SPEED TRAIN may SLICE HIM IN HALF!!! Then I took issue over the phrase "mortal enemy". Because it is "too Latin" and I thought "deadly foe" sounded better. I just checked the etymology of my own expression and sure enough it is Anglo-Saxon. Yeah yeah yeah and I should probably get a life yeah yeah there is nothing else to write about except that I'm freezing cold too much of the time and I have no idea why (being on methadone might well have something to do with it.) I wish I could think something else to post but I can't, so I'm going now. Bye.

Well that's about all. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered posting today. Does anything at all that I say here mean anything to anyone? Help anyone? Amuse anyone? Even ring true to anyone? I'm not so sure it does. Well I've got to go. I said I would come down that mental unit again and that place is starting to piss me off. One nurse in particular, and it has to be the one who opens the locked door for me, has a towering attitude problem. The other day she said "If want to leave now please hurry up. I'm supposed to be doing a one to one and..." blah blah blah. I should have told her if she's doing one-to-one care on somebody she shouldn't be going near the door anyway. Perhaps another nurse should get off her great fat arse and leave that goldfish bowl of a nurses' station they like to hide out in. Avoiding doing anything that might fulfil the definition of "work". I think a lot of them choose mental nursing over physical because they think it's easier. But when your patients are mobile plus raving mad, nothing is ever easy. Except, as I say, hiding in the nurses' station, avoiding them...

I have a doctor's appointment first thing on Wednesday. Maybe I'll actually tell her how I really feel, instead of putting on my big "I'm fine" act. Not that there's anything she can do except propose changing the medication to olanzapine (Zyprexa) which I don't want. Particularly as the stuff is notorious for causing the unfortunate patient to balloon out with weight gain. She could try and get me an appointment with a shrink, but I doubt it. Last time I ended up in General Psychiatric Services I saw a new doctor every single time. Not even a proper psychiatrist, but a doctor-in-training only there to work off their compulsory stint in a psychiatric clinic so that when they do get out of that place they can turn their back and never work with mental patients again.



Illustrated: horrible granulated "lemon" tea; the DSM IV etc., books for psychiatrists quoted ad nauseum in websites designed for patients; Fizz strawberry cyder, a nonexistent nurses' station in a nonexistent hospital (this is supposed to be the nuthouse in the Bronx, New York, but somehow I doubt any mental unit anywhere looks quite that shiny and clean... an ad for would-be psychiatrists on the issue of street drugs. We used to have a notorious doctor in this area who loathed druggies and routinely discharged them from hospital and/or chucked them off his list. There is no question that he contributed to my friend's death by treating her so badly last time she was on his ward that she refused ever to return. Then was found dead, having overdosed on every bit of medication she could get her hands on...

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MUSIC
Not at all in the mood for this, but what the hell...






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